More on rural flight

A Slave Lake specialty shop says it is closing due to competition from online shopping. There may be more to it than that, but it’s getting to be a fairly common story. It comes at the same time as a news item from Vancouver: online retailing giant Amazon is opening a facility there Vancouver that it expects will employ 3,000 people. Maybe they’ll be people who lost their jobs in traditional retail stores due to competition from online outfits like Amazon. What it points to is the continuing concentration of retail success and power in the hands of very few, very large corporations, who operate in a handful of large centres. Among other effects: a continuation or even hastening of the flight of people from rural areas and smaller towns and cities into the big cities where the jobs are.

Maybe the only people living in the boondocks one day will be those willing to put up without the modern conveniences.